home and gone

just thought i would post a quick link to our tofino photos while i am home for a few days! we got home from our west coast trip last sunday. we were home for 2 days then we went down to spokane to visit brent's family. we are home until friday when the kids and i head to red deer for one last hoorah before school starts.

what a whirlwind august it has been. but i'm not complaining! i love summer!!!!


LOVE this picture of paige!

quick update from the west coast

what a GREAT time we have been having here at the pacific rim park on vancouver island - we are staying at a really awesome beach resort just south of a small town called tofino....one of my absolutely favorite places ON THE WHOLE EARTH!!!!! i love the sand, the smell, the cool ocean breeze, the sunny days, and even the rainy ones here. what a fabulous place. our boys have had so much fun poking sea anemones, touching starfish, finding crabs, collecting shells, jumping waves, climbing rocks, and just running amok on the beach. what a wonderful holiday it has been. after a major bump getting here (see the ps) we have been having a fantastic vacation....can you tell i

love, Love, LOVE it here!!!

pictures to follow when we get home and i can sort through and organize the hundreds of pictures i have taken!!

p.s. THE BUMP - because the drive from nanaimo (the ferry drop off) to tofino on the island is so windy and pretty, brent thought it would be really fun to bring his motorbike on a trailer behind the van and unload and ride it to tofino after we took the ferry from vancouver to the island. SO, we drove off the ferry together in the van and then unloaded brent and his bike later in port alberni, on the way to tofino. after unloading his bike, the kids and i drove off in the van, leaving brent to put on his helmet, etc. and follow shortly behind us. after about half an hour, brent hadn't caught up to us yet and i started to wonder in the back of my mind how far behind he might have been. then my cell phone started to ring. because there was intermittent reception on the drive, i would answer my phone and then lose the signal and the call would be lost. this happened several times. finally, i got a text form an unknown number saying this:

"hello. please turn around. i am with your husband. he was in an accident. please turn around. he's ok."

talk about my heart stopping. immediately i started looking for a place to turn around while thinking, "is brent really ok? what does ok mean? is somebody telling me that just so i don't freak out while i am driving????" and other similar thoughts. my brother, rob, was in the car with me and he kept trying to text the stranger back to ask him where he was and what was going on. but, as before mentioned, bad cell phone service!! anyways, after turning around and driving for about 15 minutes, i finally come around the corner and see backed up traffic and several emergency vehicles with lights flashing, etc. up ahead. immediately i start thinking the worst. i pulled the car over, left the kids with rob, and started running on the shoulder up the road. of course, the faster i ran, the more panicked i got. the more panicked i felt, the faster i ran. i could see my mom and dad, brother and his wife, and my uncle standing on the side of the road. when i was finally within hearing distance, i just yelled to my mom and she assured me the brent was ok.

relief.

as i got closer, brent came into view. he was sitting up on the road with paramedics around him. he saw me and waved. again, relief. one of the paramedics then came over and reassured me that brent was ok - banged and bruised but ok.

so, here is what happened. according to several witnesses and from what brent can recall, he came around the corner on his motorbike and saw a young woman standing on the side of the road. there were also a couple of cars stopped in the turning lane to turn left, off of the highway. the girl looked both ways, apparently looked right at brent (brent says it looked like she looked right at him), and then decided to run across the road, right in to brent's way. he immediately laid down his bike to try and avoid the girl. he doesn't really know what happened next - whether he or the bike hit the girl - he just remembers tumbling along the pavement and then coming to a stop. he got up right away to see if the girl was ok. apparently this young woman had just been dropped off by someone after hitch hiking to this point. the man who dropped her off saw the accident and came to help right away. next on the scene was my uncle, brother, and sister in law and then my mom and dad. brent started seeing stars and had to sit down too. after checking the girl out and talking to the man who dropped her off, turns out the girl

was drunk or high or both.

stupid girl.....i can say that because she is fine. she hurt her leg and banged her head on the road but we were told she would be just fine.

lucky for us, brent is fine too. he gouged a big chunk out of the middle knuckle of his ring finger on his left hand, pretty much right to the bone. i saw it, gross!! he had some pretty good road rash on his ribs, hip, and knee, and was bruised in other places.

how grateful i am that he is ok!! i had a pretty good moment of "what if!!!???" after it happened. how blessed i feel that brent is ok - that he wasn't more seriously hurt as a result of someone else's poor decisions. how blessed i feel that our prayers for safe travel were answered.

how i love my brent!!!

a moment of bragging

sorry everyone - i can't help myself! look. at. this. baby.

of course i think she is the most beautiful baby i have ever seen. of course i think her blue eyes are fabulous. of course i think she has the cutest little grin. of course i think her hair is fantastic.

of course i think -

she. is. perfect.

and she is mine! i adore her! i can't get enough of her! she is my baby girl! my beautiful, wonderful, adorable, perfect baby girl.

i love my paige. my daughter.

summer so far

we spent the first week of our summer holidays down in montana, white water rafting for the lee family reunion. the lee's are brent's mom's family. needless to say, we had a great time!! HOT weather, TONS of kids running around, camp fires, games, visiting, and smores - we love camping!!

just a few thoughts - we spent both canada day and independence day in montana, rafting with family. how blessed i feel to live in such a beautiful and wonderful country as canada - to enjoy so many freedoms and have a great quality of life. i feel grateful that my kids can grow up in such a great country, full of boundless opportunity! how grateful i am for two great countries - and for the family i have in both.

hooray for canada and the usa!!

click here for the latest pictures!

ewwwww - be warned

so this our latest family adventure - or mishap rather.


this is a picture of burton's mashed finger. 10 days ago, we were hiking along a little river and throwing rocks in to it. so of course burton had to pick up the biggest, heaviest rock possible to try and make the biggest splash. but the rock didn't quite make it in to the water. burton dropped it and it fell....right....on....his....finger. blood everywhere. big gash. burton screaming. not fun.

burton basically "degloved" the tip of his finger - meaning that the cut was big enough and deep enough that the skin around the tip of his finger almost came off. gross. in the brief glimpse that i had of burton's finger, i thought the cut was between the bottom of his fingernail and his first knuckle. as you can see from the picture, the cut is actually right through the nail bed - it just looked like it was by his first knuckle because his skin, along with his fingernail, had been pulled that far forward by the weight of the rock.

poor burty! it has been quite traumatic for him! surgery to fix the whole thing, needles, stitches, bandage changing, doctor visits.......not fun as a parent to have to hold burton in my arms as he is screaming for the doctor to stop because he needs a "break."
the stitches came out today. it should heal just fine - maybe be a bit deformed but that's fine with burton. as long as he doesn't have to have anymore stitches or anything that hurts, he is happy.

i love you burton! you are so brave!

picture this

so, after the boys were done soccer last night, we stopped to get them slurpees on our way to cheer on brent in the last bit of his men's league soccer game. it was a beautiful night and the boys were hot so they took off their shirts. as we were sitting on the blanket, watching brent play soccer, and drinking our slurpees, evan says, "look at me mom." he had 2 of the lids from the slurpees - you know the big, bulbous ones - held up to his chest. he smiled and said,

"now i can feed the baby too."

picture it and tell me you're not laughing!

the passage of time

lots of things have happened lately that have had me thinking about time passing. here they are, in no particular order:

-i graduated from high school 10 years ago.

-my dad just celebrated his 50th birthday.

-my youngest siblings are graduating from high school and turning 18 this month.

-my youngest sister graduated from college in may.

-my older brother graduated from med school last week.

-brent has been a dentist for a full year. it has been 1 year since we moved to cranbrook.

-brent and i are celebrating our 9th anniversary in a few weeks.

-i gave birth to my 4th child 6 weeks ago.

wow - life happens!

do you ever look at your life and think, "is this really my life?" i have found myself doing that lately - do i really have a 7 year old? am i really old enough to have 4 kids? am i really married to a real dentist and live in my own house, one that we have bought and aren't renting?

are these rugrats really mine?

is this handsome man really my wonderful husband??

how did i luck out so much to have such wonderful blessings in my life?

whatever the reason, and even if it means i am getting older, how glad i am to have the life that i have!

click here for our latest pictures:)